Trump-appointed US Attorney for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli, screamed frantically at a subordinate this week over a failure to obtain an indictment from a grand jury for someone the convicted felon president’s regime wanted to imprison for who knows what the hell they did during last month’s civil unrest over ICE raids at Home Depot and other places in and around Los Angeles.
The frantic screaming came to the attention of the Los Angeles Times because others heard him on the other end of the line during a phone call with the subordinate in a courthouse hallway. Sources say they distinctly heard Essayli command the prosecutor to ignore the DOJ’s “Justice Manual,” the internal codebook directing prosecutors to bring only the cases they can win at trial. It’s not clear beyond this one unidentified non-defendant what the exact tally is of cases that failed at the grand jury stage but the Times reports that of 38 individuals targeted for felony charges but it could be as many as nine because that’s the number who’ve been hit with misdemeanors – which don’t require a grand jury – instead. Another five have had their charges dismissed without prejudice.
Three have gotten plea deals, so it’s not nothing, but damn that pesky Sixth Amendment forcing them to rely on a hostile populace to indict their neighbors for fighting back against a racist gestapo.